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I have been using InfluxDB (for throwing data into) and Grafana (for displaying pretty charts of that data). It's pretty great. I had no idea InfluxData forked

I have been using InfluxDB (for throwing data into) and Grafana (for displaying pretty charts of that data). It's pretty great. I had no idea InfluxData forked Grafana and developed their own (currently closed-source) visualization tool named Chronograf. It looks like a InfluxData branded version of Grafana. Also interesting is that it's the only closed-source element of their TICK stack. Seems like there could easily be a conflict of interest here, such as new features of InfluxData only working with Chronograf and not Grafana. grafana - http://grafana.org/ http://grafana.org/ chronograf - https://influxdata.com/get-started/#visualizing-data-with-chronograf https://influxdata.com/get-started/#visualizing-data-with-ch...

pauldix 11y ago
We didn't fork Grafana. Chronograf is a completely new product built from the ground up. They don't use the same JavaScript technologies. Chronograf uses React and Dygraphs. I believe Grafana uses Angular and Flot. We're fans of Grafana and want InfluxDB to work well with it. However, we also want the ability to change things over time and possibly take a different focus. Over time we'll be pushing Chronograf to be usable for people that fall less and less on the development side of things. It's still early stage with Chronograf so we're still iterating and testing different ideas.
- anonfunction 11y ago
  I recently switched from Grafana to Kibana due to the lack of different visualizations and sometimes data would not show up in the graphs, leaving blank spaces. The data was in influxdb. Nice to hear you're building your own project that gives you more freedom to build the best product you can.
  - pauldix 11y ago
    thanks!
- netinstructions 11y ago
  If Chronograf is a completely new product kudos to your team. I assumed it was a fork of Grafana because it looked and acted very, very similar to Grafana based on the 'Getting Started' docs of Chronograf. Just curious, what are some reasons why one would choose Chronograf over Grafana right now?
  - pauldix 11y ago
    I think it's similar because you're building graphs for a dashboard. Most of those UIs I've seen end up looking very similar. Our longer term goal with Chronograf is that it'll help with doing ad-hoc data exploration and, more importantly, give developers an easy tool to quickly build visualizations for their applications.
  - benstronaut 11y ago
    Product Designer for Chronograf here. We're currently filling in the basics of what we believe to be a strong dashboard tool, that it makes it easy to build queries, create graphs and put them in a dashboard in less than 15 min. We're at 0.3 and still implementing basic features. Where we differ in product is our approach. We see dashboarding, and building graphs as a design problem. What are the issues we're trying to solve? How can we solve them better? Main differentiation right now is the query builder which makes it easy to prototype influxql queries and see data. Also, our dashboard user flow is pretty quick to go from no graphs to full dash. We will add more visualization options later. Right now, it's a really good tool for mvping a dashboard. We're still figuring out the next steps, like more features and functionality to make it a more complete tool. My main concern is if we're solving the right problem for the right user. If you'd like to give us your thoughts as a user of dashboards we'd love to hear from you. Email us at Chronograf@influxdata.com
nseay 11y ago
I'm pretty much in the same boat. I've been experimenting with collectd+influxdb+grafana, and have been pretty impressed with how easy it's been to build a bunch of metrics. The addition of Kapacitor seems promising- alerting was a piece of the puzzle I was missing. Some people were using Sensu, but the grapevine was giving it less than stellar reviews.
- gnur 11y ago
  Why aren't you using telegraf? (just curious, I've tried both collectd and telegraf and telegraf has been much easier to setup and control imho)

pauldix 11y ago

We didn't fork Grafana. Chronograf is a completely new product built from the ground up. They don't use the same JavaScript technologies. Chronograf uses React and Dygraphs. I believe Grafana uses Angular and Flot. We're fans of Grafana and want InfluxDB to work well with it. However, we also want the ability to change things over time and possibly take a different focus. Over time we'll be pushing Chronograf to be usable for people that fall less and less on the development side of things. It's still early stage with Chronograf so we're still iterating and testing different ideas.

anonfunction 11y ago
I recently switched from Grafana to Kibana due to the lack of different visualizations and sometimes data would not show up in the graphs, leaving blank spaces. The data was in influxdb. Nice to hear you're building your own project that gives you more freedom to build the best product you can.
- pauldix 11y ago
  thanks!
netinstructions 11y ago
If Chronograf is a completely new product kudos to your team. I assumed it was a fork of Grafana because it looked and acted very, very similar to Grafana based on the 'Getting Started' docs of Chronograf. Just curious, what are some reasons why one would choose Chronograf over Grafana right now?
- pauldix 11y ago
  I think it's similar because you're building graphs for a dashboard. Most of those UIs I've seen end up looking very similar. Our longer term goal with Chronograf is that it'll help with doing ad-hoc data exploration and, more importantly, give developers an easy tool to quickly build visualizations for their applications.
- benstronaut 11y ago
  Product Designer for Chronograf here. We're currently filling in the basics of what we believe to be a strong dashboard tool, that it makes it easy to build queries, create graphs and put them in a dashboard in less than 15 min. We're at 0.3 and still implementing basic features. Where we differ in product is our approach. We see dashboarding, and building graphs as a design problem. What are the issues we're trying to solve? How can we solve them better? Main differentiation right now is the query builder which makes it easy to prototype influxql queries and see data. Also, our dashboard user flow is pretty quick to go from no graphs to full dash. We will add more visualization options later. Right now, it's a really good tool for mvping a dashboard. We're still figuring out the next steps, like more features and functionality to make it a more complete tool. My main concern is if we're solving the right problem for the right user. If you'd like to give us your thoughts as a user of dashboards we'd love to hear from you. Email us at Chronograf@influxdata.com

nseay 11y ago

I'm pretty much in the same boat. I've been experimenting with collectd+influxdb+grafana, and have been pretty impressed with how easy it's been to build a bunch of metrics. The addition of Kapacitor seems promising- alerting was a piece of the puzzle I was missing. Some people were using Sensu, but the grapevine was giving it less than stellar reviews.

gnur 11y ago
Why aren't you using telegraf? (just curious, I've tried both collectd and telegraf and telegraf has been much easier to setup and control imho)